Norris: A very good position to score some solid points

It was another stellar qualifying performance by Norris who was only a quarter second shy of the pole-winning time and good for fourth, which became third thanks to the three grid place drop penalty for Valtteri Bottas, handed to him for his pitlane shenanigans on Friday.

With good reason, Norris was well pleased with his day at Red Bull Ring and said in the team report: "A very good quali; P3 in the end. The car felt good throughout all of qualifying, I was confident and could always make the small improvements needed.

"That gave us P3, which is nice, especially to be only two-and-a-bit-tenths off pole. A lot of positives and a very good position for us to score some solid points tomorrow, but it’s a long race and that’s where the points are. That’s the important thing.”

While Norris can do no wrong this season, new teammate Ricciardo is enduring one of the worst patches of his illustrious career.

McLaren's big-bucks signing, highly rated and well-liked Australian is being made to look ordinary by the 21-year-old, a decade his junior.

Once again, Ricciardo was clearly stumped by the seven-tenths gap between him and his teammate in Q2, at the end of which his day's graft was over.

Perplexed by his AWOL form, Ricciardo reported: “Not the best day, I don’t really know why. Obviously, yesterday was good and the afternoon was really encouraging.

"We just lost a lot of pace overnight with this morning being quite slow and then quali was a similar story. Bit of a strange one at the moment.

"Yesterday looked really promising, so it’s a shame. I would never have expected to be P13. We’ll try to understand it and have a strong race," said Ricciardo.

Team principal Andreas Seidl added: “P4 in quali today, translating into starting P3 tomorrow, is the best grid position we’ve achieved so far this year. Well done to Lando, who was flying on every single lap he did, and to the team for a clean execution of the quali session.

"Of course, Daniel and ourselves are disappointed we couldn’t progress further than P13 with his car. This is something we'll analyse, reset and go again tomorrow with the clear objective to get back into the points.

“That aside, it was great to see the one-lap performance we had in the car today. Big thank you to everyone here at the track and back home for working very hard to make this happen.

"We’re looking forward to another exciting race. The aim is clear: we want to keep scoring good points for our battle in the Constructors’ Championship," concluded Seidl. (Additional reporting by Agnes Carlier)